Patients Help Form a Cancer-free Future
Who doesn’t dream of a cancer-free future? Researchers and physicians at Froedtert & The Medical College of Wisconsin are working every day to bring that dream closer to fruition. Now, patients have a way to help.
ecently, a 1,400-square-foot tissue bank was opened to house blood and tissue samples for medical research that may lead to significant breakthroughs. “Essentially every advance we know of in cancer treatment today has been accomplished through studies done on tissues donated by patients,” said Saul Suster, MD, Medical College of Wisconsin pathologist and chairman of the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. “Any drug, any treatment we offer to patients is significantly based on results obtained from experiments and investigations carried out on frozen tissue.”
Patients at Froedtert & The Medical College of Wisconsin now have the opportunity to donate tissue that would normally be discarded. When a patient has surgery for cancer, any tissue removed is sent to the Pathology lab for analysis. After analysis is complete, the tissue is normally incinerated (a portion is retained in the clinical archive). The tissue bank gives patients the power to donate that tissue. “We offer patients a choice. We can discard what’s left, or donate it to science, with the hope that better treatments or information about diseases will help people in the future,” Dr. Suster said.
Patient privacy is strictly guarded. “Our most prized charge is to take every possible step to ensure the privacy of patients is protected,” Dr. Suster said. To accomplish this, information in the tissue bank is password-protected and access is limited to authorized staff. Certain agencies and people may see and share patient health information for research, such as the research sponsors, or the United States Food and Drug Administration. Health information is provided to these groups only when required by law or approved by the Institutional Review Board, which oversees research at Froedtert & The Medical College.
Careful handling and storage of the specimens also ensures they’re useful for scientific research. If tissue samples aren’t stored carefully, they may degrade, which could lead to improper or unreliable results if the tissues are used in a scientific experiment. Tissues samples are handled with the utmost care. “A research pathologist is dedicated exclusively to the task of assuring the quality of samples stored in our bank,” Dr. Suster said.
Saul Suster, MD
Tissue samples will be available to Medical College of Wisconsin researchers, many of whom are hard at work on projects related to cancer. In the future, access to the tissue bank may be granted to researchers outside the institution as well, but Dr. Suster said
Medical College of Wisconsin investigators will always have priority use of the tissues.
Patients seem more than happy to support the effort. “The vast majority of our patients who have been approached and asked to contribute to the tissue bank have done so,” Dr. Suster said. Interested patients are asked to sign a consent that allows researchers to collect and bank tissues that would otherwise be discarded. Dr. Suster encourages all patients who have surgery at Froedtert & The Medical College to ask about tissue donation.
“We’ve found the majority of people in this community believe in helping others, showing solidarity and contributing,” Dr. Suster said. “This is a painless, easy way to do something good for yourself and others without cost to you.”
Research Efforts Expand
Medical College of Wisconsin researchers currently receive between $15 million and $18 million annually from the National Cancer Institute to investigate possible causes and cures for cancer. The tissue bank will help expand research efforts in the future.
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